Tag Archives: Les Kinney

Lest those who might have thought the latest chapter of the continuing Amelia Earhart disinformation campaign had come to a neat and tidy close with theJuly 11 reportfromThe Guardianonline that the photograph of the dock at Jaluit in the Marshall Islands had been found in a Japanese travel book published in 1935, we now have another, not unexpected, loose end. You might recall that The Guardian reported that “The image was part of aJapanese-language travelogueabout the South Seasthat was published almost two years before Earhart disappeared.”

“Does it get any worse than this?” I wrote in myJuly 12reviewof the latest History Channelpropaganda effort,“Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence.”“If the report is true, whatever the photo claims that began with NBC’sWednesday, July 5 promotion barrage, are now entirely destroyed, discredited and defunct.”

I didn’t need a report from a Japanese blogger to convince me that the claims made by Les Kinney, Morningstar Entertainmentand the History Channel, first broadcast nationwide by NBCNews on July 5, were false and totally without substance. I was the first to publicly denounceKinney’s assertions for the delusions (at best) that they were, and I’d known about this shameless plot to grab headlines under false pretenses for many months, since a reader from Pennsylvania procured the same photo from the National Archives in College Park, Md., and sent it to me.

Now Karen Earnshaw, a journalist who lives in the Marshall Islands and wrote June 26, 2015and July 9, 2015stories in the U.K.’s Daily Mail online about Dick Spink’s discoveries at Mili Atoll’s Endriken Islands, has informed me in a July 16 email about a Marshallese government press release she found on Rich Martini’s blog.Here is the release:

I

It’s not easy to read this rather fuzzy document, so here is its content:

The Republic of the Marshall Islands is following your investigation of the Amelia Earhart mystery with great interest. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on behalf of the Government of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, confirms that the photograph found in the US National Archives is the dock at Jabor on Jaluit Atoll.

Jabor Dock was built in 1936. The events of this period are still recalled by our eldest citizens. The claim that Jabor dock was already built in 1935 does not match the historical record. Therefore, it would not have been possible for any photos to have been taken of the Jabor dock in 1935. The dock simply did not exist. The elders who confirmed that Amelia and her navigator were brought to Jabor are of the highest standing and reputation in our community.

The obvious question is, who are the “your” referred to in the first line of the press release? Closely following that, we can ask who besides Rich Martini and TIGHAR, who I’ve been told also has posted it, was this release sent to? Surely they weren’t the only recipients of this highly significant statement from the Marshallese government. I think it’s perfectly obvious that the Marshalls statement was sent to many, if not every major player in the American media. How Martini and TIGHAR obtained it is irrelevant. What is relevant is that no one else in our media has paid any attention to it.

Joel Freedman, of Canandaigua, N.Y., who writes letters and editorials to newspapers locally and nationally in support of the truth, contacted the Marshalls Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was informed that the press release did originate with the Marshallese government. So at least we know this is a legitimate document.

So what does this latest revelation, which so directly contradicts The Guardianreport about the 1935 origin of the photo, really mean? It must be insignificant, based on the complete silence emanating from our esteemed media, and indeed it does mean little. But the media isn’t interested in it forentirely different reasons. They’ve already played their roles with the phony photo claims in advance of the History Channel’s Earhart special. As far as the establishment media is concerned, the Marshalls-Saipan truth has been discredited, and the public is once again flummoxed and confused about all aspects of the Earhart case. Mission accomplished.

This is the photo that began the current furor, with NBC News breathlessly announcing on July 5 that the Earhart mystery may soon by solved, and which was the cornerstone of the July 9 History Channel special, “Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence.” In the program, Les Kinney falsely claimed the photo actually revealed the lost fliers. In the right background is the ship Kinney says is the Japanese survey ship Koshu, with a mass of metal on its stern that could well be a salvaged airplane, possibly the Electra, but impossible to confirm because the definition is lacking.

It’s more than likely that the Republic of the Marshall Islands, an independent nation that doesn’t answer to the United States on all matters related to its Earhart propaganda program, was simply not informed by the appropriate parties that the current operation was over. Some in the Marshallese government might actually have been trying to be helpful and set the record straight about the provenance of the photo in relation to the dock at Jaluit. I’m sure their efforts were not appreciated, judging by the overwhelming media silence that has greeted the press release.

Meanwhile Martini has now joined the vision-challenged Les Kinney in insisting, despite all evidence, that the photo does indeed reflect the presence of Earhart and Noonan, in effect doubling down on the insanity most thought had been put to rest — and seemingly has been, with the exception of these two luminaries. Martini has apparently decided that he has nothing better to do than to team with Kinney on his grave-digging detail to incoherence and irrelevance in the Earhart chase. But is this really a case of the blind leading the blind, or is it something altogether different, something far more sinister than mere incompetence?

On his blog, Martini further muddles the picture by injecting the interesting but complex and unverifiable tale of the “bottle message” found on a beach in France in October 1937 that some have unsuccessfully tried to tie to Earhart by way of French explorer Eric De Bisschop. I decided long ago not to venture into these very murky waters that demand too much speculation to ever be accepted as fact. If you want to be thoroughly confused, I suggest you visit RichMartini’s blog,where you will come away with far less clarity than you arrived with.

For those who still fail to understand what has recently transpired despite my best efforts to explain this deviously planned disinformation exercise as clearly as possible, I can only suggest that you carefully re-read the previous posts on the HistoryChannel travesty, and to review Dave Martin’s Seventeen Techniquesfor Truth Suppression to see how many of them fit nicely into the despicable drama we’ve seen unfold since NBC Newskicked it all off with their promotion blitz on July 5.

The bottom line is that “Earhart Fever,” a condition I’ve seen work its insidious ways on far better than these two, is alive, well and highly contagious. Its victims can be identified by their abject willingness to say or do anything that will bring them a moment’s more attention than they otherwise deserve, which is little or none at all.

Readers of this blog can continue to trust that this correspondent will always tell them the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. My integrity and credibility are all I have, and they are infinitely more valuable to me than a few minutes on a third-rate History Channel Earhart special.

The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.” — George Orwell

If I wanted to produce a TV documentary that pretends to provide evidence in support of the truth as we know it — Amelia Earhart’s Marshall Islands landing and death on Saipan — while at the same time cunningly undermining this evidence by predicating its entire existence on sensational claims about a bogus photo that are soon entirely discredited, I couldn’t do better than Morningstar Entertainment’s“Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence,”which premiered July 9 on History, formerly and better known as the History Channel.

Here’s History’s promotion of the program on its website: “The disappearance of Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan on July 2, 1937 is one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of all time. Now, 80 years later, former FBI Executive Assistant Director Shawn Henry investigates new, astonishing evidence behind the disappearance of America’s first female aviator in History’stwo-hour special ‘Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence.’”

Sounds interesting, doesn’t it? That’s the idea – to hook the unwary into watching this snake oil. But for those who truly understand the Earhart story, such as your humble correspondent,History andMorningstar Entertainment,which produced this program, practically gave their whole game away when they announced that the Earhart disappearance is “one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of all time.” This is a verifiable lie. As I constantly stress, this great American travesty, this great myth of the Earhart “mystery,” simply doesn’t exist. It’s nothing more than a cultural construct that’s been sold for 80 years to an unwitting, inattentive public.The fact that it’s believed by nearly everyone doesn’t change the truth.

An amazing portrait of our heroine at the tender age of 7. She seems to be peering into timelessness, as if she can actually see the amazing adventures that are in store for her — and us. Who can fathom it?

In the deepest recesses of the U.S. national security apparatus, where the physical evidence of Earhart and Fred Noonan’s presence and death on Saipan is kept under the strongest lock and key, there’s no Earhart mystery.Most importantly, there’s no Earhart mystery in the minds of anyone involved in the Morningstar production, or anyone else who knows how to find and read one of the few books that present the truth, especially but certainly not exclusivelyAmelia Earhart: The Truth at Last.

Look around the Net and you can find plenty of “experts” who will tell you why you should believe them about the claims that have been made. For the few who might ask what I thought, I never imagined there was even the remotest possibility that the man claimed as Fred Noonan was he, or that Amelia Earhart was this strange person sitting on the dock. Amelia was never known to have thick black hair, not in any of thousands of photos I’ve ever seen.

The claims about the ship were also shaky, as I saw no plane on a barge behind the ship, and what looks to be a wake of white water and a blurry object that might be a small barge, or even a small boat. A huge metallic mass on its stern could be an airplane, any airplane, as Koshu was known to pick up wrecked planes at sea. The whole drill seems like some kind of bizarre Rorschach test, with any two observers extremely unlikely to agree on what they’re viewing. This is not how one establishes the presence of Amelia Earhart in this or any photo, or what should be the predicate for a History Channel program that purports to be presenting the world “astonishing new evidence” in the Earhart case.

Perhaps most illustrative of the insanity that has prevailed in the current Earhart flap is this photo comparison that was so prevalent throughout big media last week. Amelia never had heavy black hair, as this “person” does. Now comes word fromThe Guardianthat the ONI photo, from which the one on the left was excised, was found to have been in a 1935 travel magazine.

“I agree 100 percent with your take [on the photo], longtime Earhart researcher and former Office of Naval Intelligence agent Ron Bright told me in a July 5 email. “I saw the photo about a year ago, up close, etc., by Kinney, and told him I could not ID AE sitting on the dock, nor ID the plane on a raft on the stern as the Electra. No guards, no official presence etc., on the dock. Undated, and photographer unknown.

“Now if you agree with Bilimon Amaron that he treated two Americans, a man and woman, on the deck of the Koshu, a few days after 2 July 37, for minor wounds, the facts don’t fit,” Bright continued. “Amaron was very clear to two researchers that the Koshu left shortly for Jaluit with a plane on the stern, with a broken wing, and that the two, probably AE/FN DID NOT LEAVE THE SHIP FOR A SECOND, while in port and before sailing away. It is [in] Les’s eyes that the girl (?) sitting there with rather heavy head of hair, with a white shirt (AE left Lae in a checked shirt) was AE. I don’t buy it. Compare hair at Lae with the rather heavy thick hair on the person sitting on the dock. No date, no cigar!”Of course, with the discovery of the Japanese travelogue, this is all academic now, but I thought it might interest some.

Longtime Earhart researcher Ron Bright, of Bremerton, Wash., said of the claims made about the Jaluit ONI photo, “I don’t buy it. . . No date, no cigar!”

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and this photo failed utterly and completely, even before The Guardianreport laid waste to this fraud forever. Does anyone except Les Kinney actually think that Earhart and Noonan are in this photo? Does Kinney still believe it?

I wish the ONI photo actually did portray Earhart and Noonan, because our very worthy cause for the truth would have taken a giant step forward at the moment millions saw it on national television. In itself, that would be extremely gratifying to me, regardless of who got the credit. But I’m also convinced that if the photo is the game changer Kinney and Morningstar claim, it would have never have seen air, and would have been completely suppressed.

The brilliant news analyst David Martin (DCDave.com), who’s written two fine reviews of The Truthat Last,may see the essence of the current situation better than anyone. Last week Martin weighed in on two days after NBC News broke the news about the photo, kicking off four days of promotions for the Sunday premier. Initially Martin shared my pessimism about a documentary predicated on such a shaky foundation as the ONI Jaluit photo, as his July 7 post,“PressTouts Dubious Earhart Photo, reflected.

“The special was conspicuously designed not to be taken seriously,” Martin told me. “I thought it had a certain supermarket tabloid quality to it, and I think Wikipedia’s response will be the standard one and was probably already in the can before the program aired. Notice Wikipedia’s use of # 6 in the Seventeen Techniques for TruthSuppression,“Impugn motives.” They’re just doing it to make money, like that Campbell guy with his book. To be sure their motives were not pure, but in a different way.

This is just too good!” Martin wrote in a July 11 email after learning of The Guardian’s findings about the now-infamous ONI photo. “The whole thing was surely a set-up. It’s really amazing the lengths to which they go to keep the lid on the Earhart story. Notice thatThe Guardian is following the script to the letter, pretending that debunking the photo debunks the notion that Earhart was captured by the Japanese. Now watch the rest of the MSM line up to sing from the same choir book. It’s all really quite shameful, all in the service of protecting FDR’s reputation.”

David Martin at the grave of James V. Forrestal at Arlington, Va. No one has done more to prove that Forrestal was murdered by unknown killers on May 22, 1949. See DCDave.com for an adventure in the true history of many of this nation’s sacred cows. (Photo courtesy David Martin.)

Martin continued that theme in another July 11 email. “The vultures are sweeping in more quickly than I thought they would,” Martin wrote. “This is turning out to be a textbook example of #4 in the Seventeen Techniquesfor TruthSuppression. The Guardianquite shamelessly leaves its readers with the impression that debunking this photo — whose phoniness you correctly called — debunks the very notion that Earhart was captured by the Japanese.”

“The Lost Evidence,”formatted in what has become an annoying Reality TV “investigative team” of poseurs we see virtually everywhere these days, did deliver slightly more than I expected. The most important of all the Saipan eyewitnesses, Josephine Blanco Akiyama, 91, and still mentally sharp, told her story to Shawn Henry at her San Mateo home. But to my pleasant surprise, and for the first time on any mainstream TV program, important eyewitnesses other than Josephine were shown, albeit briefly. We saw Bilimon Amaron on film from the mid-1980s, telling T.C. Buddy Brennan of his experience aboard Koshu, treating Noonan while Amelia stood by. In a 1989 interview with Bill Prymak, Amaron said some of the Japanese crewman called the woman, “Meelya, Meelya.”

From the film archives of Don Kothera, which are now in the possession of Les Kinney, we saw Saipan’s Joaquina Cabrera, who washed Amelia’s clothes, and was said to have been moved by Amelia’s “kind eyes,” according to local historian Genevieve Cabrera; and Anna Magofna, who as 7-year-old watched as a tall white man was beheaded while a white woman stood by, and then ran in terror before she could learn what happened next. Lotan Jack, another Marshallese witness interviewed by Buddy Brennan, was also briefly seen on film. David Sablan of Saipan, among the last of the old guard on Saipan, told his interviewer, “I believe firmly that Amelia Earhart” was on Saipan.” These witnesses are magnificent and revealing figures whose convincing accounts, if known and accepted by enough concerned Americans, might help unlock the deepest locks in Washington, the ones with the top-secret Earhart files.

General Alexander A. Vandegrift, eighteenth commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, confirmed Amelia Earhart’s death on Saipan in an August 1971 letter to Fred Goerner. Vandegrift wrote that he learned from Marine General Tommy Watson, who commanded the 2nd Marine Division during the assault on Saipan and died in 1966, that “Miss Earhart met her death on Saipan.” (U.S. Marine Corps photo.)

General Alexander A. Vandegrift’s 1971 letter to Fred Goerner, in which the Medal of Honor winner told Goerner that “Miss Earhart met her death in that area [Saipan] because that has been substantiated,” another blockbuster revelation that has never seen American airwaves, was introduced for the first time. On top of this, the 1960 Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) Report was briefly mentioned, another first, to my knowledge. Vandegrift’s letter truly prompted me to wonder ifMorningstarandHistorywere actually serious about trying to advance the truth, unlike all other network Earhart documentaries in recent memory, which are little more than slick infomercials for TIGHAR and Nauticos’ fund-raising activities. But too many red flags signaled that “The Lost Files” was just an advanced form of media disinformation, dressed up and pretending to be a sincere presentation of “new evidence.”

“I, too, was surprised at how far they went in revealing the truth,” Martin wrote in a July 10 email. “It was way too slick to be the product of incompetence, and we know what that leaves us with, which practically radiated from the screen. The proof of the pudding will be in the reaction of the opinion-molding community. What we will see, for the most part, will be a combination of #1 and #14 in theSeventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression.The contrast between the buildup and the reaction will be striking. Most will simply ignore it and proceed as though the program never aired. Those few who might write about it will devote most of their attention to debunking the photo. No one in the MSM or the academic community will ruminate about what it all means. “Nothing to see here. Move along.”

Laurel Blyth Tague, Ph.D., a friend and former radio talk show host I’ve known for several years since doing two long interviews on her program, is now well versed in the media’s Earhart disinformation program. But even she has been surprised by the way this soap opera has played out. “I am most struck by the determined refusal [by media] to go DEEPER into any existent supporting evidence by all these people, Blyth Tague wrote in July 8 email. “What I mean by ‘surprised’ is that there is no excuse for that perspective, that it almost jumps out as intentional and hostile. They are tipping their hand.” Indeed they were, but as always, these rats in the media are also good little soldiers and carry out their orders without questions or qualms. The real question is how much of the public will actually see this sleazy charade for what it is?

For me, the worst aspect of“The Lost Evidence” was the abject refusal of the principles to acknowledge the work of so many fine researchers and authors who made this program possible. It’s as it these people discovered the story just the other day, when some local natives told them about it. They never mentioned the most important Earhart disappearance book ever written, Fred Goerner’sThe Search for Amelia Earhart, and insisted on calling Goerner, a “journalist,” not the great researcher and author he was. Other notable Earhart researchers fared even worse, and none of them, not Vincent V. Loomis, Thomas E. Devine, Oliver Knaggs, T.C. “Buddy” Brennan or Bill Prymak were ever even mentioned. Donald Kothera had to be cited once or twice, because some of the film shown came from Kothera’s archives, which he left to Kinney upon his death.

Otherwise, History’spretentious-beyond-words “investigative team” took all the credit for about 60 years of research by several devoted, honorable men who risked life, limb and reputation in pursuit of the truth. This practice is absolutely beneath contempt, and is the most shameful breach of ethical and moral standards I’ve yet had the extreme displeasure of viewing on the small screen. For someone like myself, who’s spent 30 years on this story and never lied about any aspect of it to anyone, not once, watching these thieves and pirates prattling and posing throughout this horrid program was painful indeed.

The only bestseller ever penned on the Earhart disappearance, Searchsold over 400,000 copies and stayed on the New York Timesbestseller list for six months. In September 1966, Timemagazine’s scathing review, titled “Sinister Conspiracy,” set the original tone for what has become several generations of media aversion to the truth about Amelia’s death on Saipan. The producers of Morningstar couldn’t see fit to mention Goerner’s book at any time during their July 9 HistoryChannel special, or even call him an author, but simply called him “journalist Fred Goerner.” This self-aggrandizing credit grabbing cast a pall over the entire production.

I can’t say with certainty whether Kinney actually believed what he said in “The Lost Evidence,” or whether he knew the truth. Kinney has said more than once that he’s spent “thousands of hours” at government archives over many years in search of the smoking gun in the Earhart case. Based on countless conversations I had with him for several years after he initially contacted me in 2012, it’s easy to believe Kinney convinced himself that he saw things and people that weren’t there. Though it’s a stretch, it’s remotely possible this Earhart-addled soul actually believed his own imagination, but I seriously doubt it. But to those around him, who enabled and facilitated this absurdity presented on this program as legitimate, we shouldn’t think for a millisecond that they were sincere. Are we to believe they’re all delusional or incompetent, including the former FBI official Shawn Henry and Morningstar chief Gary Tarpinian?

Conclusion: A Pure Propaganda Operation

In my opinion, “The Lost Evidence” exhibits many of the hallmarks of a classic disinformation operation. “The Lost Evidence” is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a masterpiece of deceit, cleverly designed to discredit the long-established facts that reveal the truth about Earhart and Fred Noonan’s landing at Mili Atoll and deaths on Saipan at the hands of the prewar Japanese.

It’s a variant of a technique known as “FakeOpposition,” or more commonly, “Controlled Opposition,”and traces its ancestry to Vladimir Lenin, who said, “The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.” The controlled opposition, in this case, would be anything that purports to contradict the officially approved theories about the Earhart case, which do not need re-stating here. Also known as “Psychological Operations” or PSYOPS, this practice is ubiquitous in our media. The onslaught of activity from the leaders of our fake news brigade that preceded the July 9 airing is all we need to tell us that a massive propaganda operation was under way, and remains so.

I’ve had enough experience with media and their aversion to the truth about Amelia Earhart to know that nobody who runs production companies in Hollywood could be this incompetent. Many will disagree with my analysis, and say it’s good that the Marshalls, Saipan and Earhart are being presented together in any way at all on History, considering the media blackout that has predominated up till now. But this reasoning is shortsighted, and is rooted in the fact that most Americans want to be entertained, not educated, especially when they watch TV. “The Lost Evidence”undoubtedly fulfilled the entertainment requirement for most, but it is not the work of people who are serious about advancing the truth; on the contrary, they are dead set on discrediting the truth.

IfMorningstarand History wanted to make the case for the Marshalls-Saipan truth, this was not the way to do it. Kinney’s ridiculous ONI photo that has now been re-dated by two years earlier in a Japanese travel guide, the empty hole on Saipan, Spink’s unlinked artifacts, all these fail miserably to corroborate the truth as we know it, all are little more than objects of interest and speculation. Nothing is proven in any of these investigations, and plenty of ammunition is handed to the enemies of the truth. The interviews of Josephine Blanco Akiyama, Bilimon Amaron, David Sablan, and footage of Joaquina Cabrera mean nothing when the predicate of the program is destroyed a few days after it airs. Who in the mainstream is showing any interest in the Marshalls-Saipan truth? Not a soul, all are jumping on to denounce all of it because the photo claim no longer holds water. The entire program has now been tainted and will quickly be forgotten. “The Lost Evidence” is simply and transparently the work of people who want to undermine the truth as we know it.

I like Dick Spink and consider him an honest man and a friend, and I don’t believe he’s culpable for the ugliness and stink that so characterize“The Lost Evidence.”But Spink and Les Kinney, with their three minutes (down considerably from Andy Warhol’s original 15) are yet oblivious to the cold fact that they have been duped and made unwitting pawns in the establishment’s ongoing Earhart disinformation efforts, Kinney far more than Spink, who is little more than an innocent bystander.

Kinney, whose dreams of fame and glory, of being hailed as the “man who solved the Earhart mystery,” has lost all credibility and is witnessing a far different reality, as his fantasy dissolves into smoke before his very eyes. After all, how can one solve a mystery that doesn’t exist?Kinney has only himself to blame, because he lit the fuse that ignited this monster. On many occasions I tried to tell him about the media and its overwhelming hatred of the truth, that if he were ever to find a legitimate smoking gun, they would never allow it to stand. He never listened, thinking he knew better.

Just before the publication ofAmelia Earhart:The Truth at Lastin June 2012, Sunbury Press Publisher Larry Knorr asked me what my goal was for the book. My answer was simple: I wanted to change the conversation about the Earhart disappearance, to make the Marshalls-Saipan truth at least an acceptable possibility again, instead of the forbidden territory where only conspiracy nuts dared to tread. In the big picture,“The Lost Evidence” has done nothing except incite a brief argument about the credibility of a photo. Meanwhile, something unintended may have happened, because more readers are coming to this blog and to Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last. The silver lining is real.

“Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence”is only the latest in the growing list of tawdry Reality TV rip-offs, serial disinformation classics such as“Hunting Hitler,” “Mystery of Oak Island,”“JFK Declassified:Tracking Oswald”and other phony productions conceived in the worst tradition of Barnum and Bailey and designed to sow only confusion, ignorance, money and ratings. It’s all so predictable, depressing and most of all, EVIL. Nothing but darkness and lies have plagued the Earhart case since its earliest days, and if the American public ever learned about its own history, few would watch these time-killers, the ratings would plunge and less of these abominations would be produced.

When this nasty little episode fades away, the whole cast of odious characters, with the exception of Dick Spink and his legitimate work in the Marshalls, will soon be forgotten, relegated to the void that is the just reward for those who serially abuse the truth with a disregard and contempt that hasn’t been equaled in recent memory. Their Sacred Cow has been protected once again through the most deceitful of methods, but Amelia Earhart: TheTruth at Last will remain standing, stronger than ever.

On Wednesday morning, July 5, I awoke to the long-anticipated news that an unclassified photo found at the National Archives in College Park, Md., by researcher Les Kinney that reflected Jaluit Harbor in the Marshall Islands, date possibly late 1930s but not known, would indeed be the centerpiece of the History Channel’s July 9 special,“Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence.”NBC Newsapparently had the TV network news exclusive on this story, but others were soon also breathlessly touting the photo, as if it were truly the Holy Grail in the Earhart case. To see the initial NBC video and story,pleaseclick here.

This would be great news if the claim that Amelia Earhart, Fred Noonan and the Earhart Electra are in the photo were true, because we know that the doomed fliers were in the Marshalls, were taken to Jaluit and later to Kwajalein and Saipan, where they died in Japanese hands. Several researchers and authors, whose work can be easily found on this site, have presented mountains of evidence to this effect. But this photo isn’t “evidence” of anything except that Koshu was at Jaluit Harbor (large ship in right background) when it was taken, and might have had an unidentifiable airplane on its stern. Interesting, but hardly what our “experts” are telling us. In fact, this photo does little except discredit the truth, which, in my view, is the goal of this current exercise, along with ratings and making money, of course.

This is the photo of Jaluit Harbor, possibly circa 1930s, put forward by Les Kinney, Morningstar Entertainment, the History Channel and their confederates as the smoking gun in the Earhart case. It is noteworthy only in that these claims are among the most ridiculous in the history of Earhart research, even surpassing some of the incredible whoppers we’ve heard from Ric Gillespie of TIGHAR. The question we should ask is why this photo, and why now? Stay tuned to this space for answers to these and other small “mysteries” in the Earhart case.

Earhart and Noonan are absolutely not in the photo, and it’s incredible that anyone could believe they are. Zoom in and you can see the upper half of a white man with black hair on the far left of the group on the dock. Kinney and an “expert” say it’s Noonan, but the features, the nose, the hairline are all wrong, and any intelligent analysis rules him out. The so-called experts are either incompetent or lying, and we all know that some paid experts will say anything. Nobody in the photo remotely resembles Earhart, inasmuch as anyone’s facial features can be determined at all.

Furthermore, where are the Japanese military personnel who would have been close and in control of the American spies after their pickup at Mili Atoll? Where is the tension one would expect in such a photo? It simply doesn’t exist; the group on the dock appears to be out for a Sunday stroll, or awaiting someone’s arrival from one of the ships in the harbor. None of it computes, unless one understands what the real game is here, and even this olfactorily challenged writer can smell a rat when it stinks this badly.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence; this photo offers none and fails completely. Does anyone except Les Kinney really think that Earhart and Noonan are in this photo? This photo will be totally rejected by virtually everyone who knows what Amelia and Fred Noonan looked like, and its use on this program will do nothing except to discredit the truth as we know it. Our ideological enemies — and we all know who they are — will label its proponents as delusional fanatics.

I will have much more to say about the odious claims being made about this photo, as well as other irresponsible assertions that will also be advanced by the History Channel on July 9. I’ll post my review following the airing of“Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence.”

Earhart researchers Dick Spink and Les Kinney, who led a search team sponsored by Parker Aerospace, returned from Mili Atoll in the Marshall Islands Jan. 30 after spending five days combing the tiny Endriken Islands near Barre Island with high-tech equipment including ground-penetrating radar and metal detectors.

Although no one has made any more claims that “concrete proof” or a “Holy Grail” has been found, they didn’t return empty-handed, either, and some of the artifacts appear to have serious potential.

“Wow, what a trip!” Spink wrote in an email Feb. 3. “Two of the pieces we found are very consistent with what I found on my first couple expeditions to Mili. One piece in particular is some type of identification plate that is consistent in size with that of a Lockheed airframe tag. There is no way of knowing this until we get it to the lab, but you can tell it was some type of ID tag.

Dick Spink stands at what he believes is the spot where Amelia Earhart landed her Electra on July 2, 1937. Spink, Les Kinney and a search team returned to the area for a five-day search of the tiny Endriken Islands in late January.

“Something important to note,” Spink continued, “is that all of the aluminum pieces we found were in a direct line between where [I believe] the [Earhart] plane came to rest and the location of where the plane was loaded onto the shallow draft barge. Very interesting indeed, and the foundation of this story is becoming more solid.”

“We found six small artifacts that could or could not have come from the Electra,” Kinney wrote in a Jan. 29 email. “We also found a couple of small unidentified pieces of aluminum, and a round one inch diameter rusted magnet. Most of this stuff was buried — all except one piece were found by metal detectors.”

Kinney urged caution about making any premature announcements until thorough testing can be done. He will coordinate the tests, financed by Parker Aerospace and conducted as soon as possible. None of the tests will likely provide absolute proof that an artifact came from the Earhart plane, but Kinney, Spink and antique aircraft Jim Hayton all believe the aluminum plate and airwheel dust cover found by Spink in previous trips to the Endrikens were probably from the Electra.

Kinney also interviewed some native Marshallese he called “knowledgeable locals” in theMili Atoll area, and says he “confirmed there were no aircraft wrecks on any of the nearby islands stretching out for at least ten miles” during or before the war years, with only one exception. This supports his earlier research, and makes the possibilities even stronger that one or more of the artifacts’ came from the Earhart plane.

“We also got some Japanese aircraft samples we picked up on Mili Island to compare the aluminum we got from our island,” Kinney wrote, adding that “everything has been cleared by the Marshallese government. I wrote up a release and the President signed it as well as the Historic Preservation Office Manager. Everything is legal.”

As is usually been the case when Earhart searches are undertaken by TIGHAR, Nauticos and others, the media has enthusiastically informed the public about the great adventure. These same news agencies have almost invariably failed to publish follow-ups when the searches fail to deliver. Much the same is the case here, though on a far smaller scale; nothing about the search has been published to date by Yahoo! News or any other media outlet, though Spink says he will be talking to a local newspaper soon, and other possible media exposure may be forthcoming.

Readers of this blog can be sure that this reporter will do all that he can to keep them informed about any news in what might be properly called “the postmodern” search for Amelia Earhart.

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The Second Edition of “Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last,” is a large 7″ by 10″ paperback offering 370 pages at the same low retail price of $19.95, and significantly less at Amazon.com. The book adds two chapters, a new foreword, several new subsections, the most recent discoveries, rare photos and a near-total rewrite to the mountain of overwhelming witness testimony and documentation presented in the first edition of “Truth at Last. ”

Even as a child, Amelia had the look of someone destined for greatness. In this photo, she seems to be gazing at events far away in time and space. Who can fathom it?

This is a priceless portrait of our heroine at the tender age of 7. She seems to be peering into timelessness, as if she can actually see the amazing adventures that are in store for her — and us. Who can fathom it?

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Amelia at Spadina Military Hospital, Toronto, Canada, circa 1917-’18

While visiting Muriel at St. Margaret’s College in Toronto in 1917, Amelia encountered three Canadian soldiers who had lost a leg, and decided, on the spot, to join the war effort. She enrolled in the Voluntary Aid Detachment and was assigned to the Spadina Military Hospital. “Sister Amelia soon became a favorite among the wounded and discouraged men,” Muriel wrote.

Arrival at Londonderry, Ireland, May 21, 1932

Earhart had spent the last 15 hours tossed by dangerous storms over the North Atlantic, contending with failing machinery and sipping a can of tomato juice to calm her queasy stomach. That day—May 21, 1932—she planned to end her journey at Paris’ Le Bourget airfield, where exactly five years earlier Charles Lindbergh had completed the first solo transatlantic flight. When her Vega’s reserve fuel tank sprang a leak and flames began engulfing the exhaust manifold, however, Earhart wound up navigating to a Northern Ireland pasture. From that moment , Amelia Earhart’s star shined brightest, and her like has never been seen since.

Acclaim at Londonderry

Another great photo of Amelia, as she prepares to take off from Derry, Northren Ireland, and fly on to London, where worldwide fame awaited. After a flight lasting 14 hours, 56 minutes during which she contended with strong northerly winds, icy conditions and mechanical problems, Earhart landed in a pasture at Culmore, north of Derry, Northern Ireland. The landing was witnessed by Cecil King and T. Sawyer. When a farm hand asked, “Have you flown far?” Earhart replied, “From America.” The site now is the home of a small museum, the Amelia Earhart Centre.

Summer 1960: The Saipan Truth comes out

The headline story of the May 27, 1960 edition of the San Mateo Times was the first of several stories written by ace reporter Linwood Day that set the stage for Fred Goerner’s first visit to Saipan in mid-June 1960 and led Goerner’s 1966 bestseller, “The Search for Amelia Earhart.” Day worked closely by phone with Goerner, and on July 1, 1960, the Earhart frenzy reached its peak, with the Times announcing “Amelia Earhart Mystery Is Solved” in a 100-point banner headline accross its front page.

This story appeared in the San Mateo Times “Family Weekly” news magazine on July 3, 1960. The sensational account revealed details of her life as an 11-year-old on 1937 Saipan, but the true picture of what she actually saw that day remains in question. Was it a seaplane or a landplane in trouble that landed at Tanapag Harbor?

Fred Goerner with witness Manual Aldan, Saipan, 1960

Fred Goerner with witness Manuel Aldan on Saipan, June 1960. Aldan was a dentist whose practice was restricted to Japanese officers in 1937, and though he didn’t see the American fliers, he heard much about them from his patients. Aldan told Goerner that one officer identified the white woman as “Earharto!” (Courtesy San Francisco Library Special Collections.)

The only bestseller ever penned on the Earhart disappearance, “Search” sold over 400,000 copies and stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for six months. In September 1966, Time magazine’s scathing review, titled “Sinister Conspiracy,” set the original tone for what has become several generations of media aversion to the truth about Amelia’s death on Saipan.

This story, which announced Thomas E. Devine’s Saipan gravesite claim, appeared in the San Mateo Times on July 16, 1960. Devine returned to Saipan in 1963 and located the gravesite shown to him by the Okinawan woman in August 1945, but did not share his find with Fred Goerner. Instead Devine planned to return to Saipan by himself, but he never again got the opportunity.

Thomas E. Devine, whose involvement with events surrounding the discovery and destruction of Amelia Earhart’s Electra 10E as a 28-year-old Army postal sergeant on Saipan in July 1944 shaped the rest of his life. Devine’s 1987 classic, “Eyewitness: The Amelia Earhart Incident,” is among the most important books about the Earhart disappearance ever penned.

Thomas E. Devine’s “Eyewitness: The Amelia Earhart Incident” (1987) is Devine’s first-person account of his eyewitness experiences on Saipan, where he saw Amelia Earhart’s Electra 10, NR 16020 on three occasions, the final time the plane was in flames. Devine’s book is among the most important ever penned in revealing the truth about the disappearance of Amelia Earhart.

On November 13, 1970, the Japan Times reported, for the first time, the shocking claims of Mrs. Michiko Sugita, who was told of Amelia Earhart’s execution on Saipan in 1937. Sugita, the eleven-year-old daughter of the civilian chief of police on Saipan in 1937, told the Japan Times in 1970 that Japanese military police shot Amelia Earhart as a spy there. Sugita, the first Japanese national to report Earhart’s presence on Saipan, corresponded for a time with Thomas E. Devine, but later went missing and his letters were returned, marked, “No such person, unknown.”

Mrs. Michiko Sugita, Japanese national, Earhart witness

Mrs. Michiko Sugita, whose account as told to the Japan Times in 1970 remains the only testimony from a Japanese national that attests to Amelia Earhart’s presence and death on Saipan following her July 2, 1937 disappearance. Sugitia corresponded with Thomas E. Devine for a few years in the mid-1970s before Devine’s letters were returned with the notation, “No such person. Return to sender.”

This story appeared at the top of page 1 in the July 13, 1937 edition of the Bethlehem (Pennsylvania)-Globe Times. “Vague and unconfirmed rumors that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan have been rescued by a Japanese fishing boat without a radio,” the report began, “and therefore unable to make any report, found no verification here today, but plunged Tokio [sic] into a fever of excitement.” The story was quickly squelched in Japan, and no follow-up was done. (Courtesy Woody Peard.)

Adm. Chester W. Nimitz: Fred Goerner’s most respected informant

Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, circa 1942, the last of the Navy’s 5-star admirals. In late March 1965, a week before his meeting with General Wallace M. Greene Jr. at Marine Corps Headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, Nimitz called Goerner in San Francisco. “Now that you’re going to Washington, Fred, I want to tell you Earhart and her navigator did go down in the Marshalls and were picked up by the Japanese,” Goerner claimed Nimitz told him. The admiral’s revelation appeared to be a monumental breakthrough for the determined newsman, and is known even to many casual observers of the Earhart matter. “After five years of effort, the former commander of U.S. Naval Forces in the Pacific was telling me it had not been wasted,” Goerner wrote.

Marshall Islands 50th Anniversary Commemorative Stamps, 1987

The independent Republic of the Marshalls Islands issued these four postage stamps to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Amelia Earhart’s landing at Mili Atoll and pickup by the Japanese survey ship Koshu in July 1937. To the Marshallese people, the Earhart disappearance is no mystery or rumor, but a stone cold fact.